Elusive Shores: Lamartine’s Méditations and the Art of Poetry

Abstract

A quels bords irai-je porter mes reveries et mes malheurs? --Lamartine to A. de Virieu, 5 Oct. 1811 When referring to his first Meditations Poetiques (1820), Lamartine often portrayed his lyric voice as free melody detached from consciousness: Je veux me laisser aller ou me portera la fantasia (Dec. 1818 [18-73]). (1) Persona notwithstanding, this paper aims to nuance the traditional view of Lamartine as purely inspired lyricist through an analysis of specific changes in his concept of poetry as they are reflected in specific poems and prose commentaries. Lamartines so-called inattention to form is actually, to use Maurice Blanchot's words, purete that reflects the will and methode of the poet: La facilite est sa principale rigueur. (176) Others have highlighted the same purposeful restraint when it comes to the poet's language and rhetoric: Ce n'est pas par negligence ou paresse que Lamartine s'est peu corrige,--et il s'est plus corrige qu'on ne l'a cru jadis (Bruneau 154). (2) More recently, Mary Ellen Birkett has lent refreshing counterpoint to the view of Lamartine as an instrument played upon, to demonstrate the poet's artful use of a kaleidoscope of poetic expressions, creating beautiful, everchanging patterns from pieces which are already supplied (40). (3) The Meditations invite further study of Lamartine's poetic process. Though the towering Chateaubriand had pointedly omitted poetry from his recent overviews of modern French literature in Conservateur, Lamartine asserted the French lyric's relevancy through slim volume of elegies. Charting chronological path that aligns the poet's correspondence with developments in several key poems reveals Lamartine to be highly self-conscious, lucidly experimental poet who tempers feeling with compositional restraint: N'as-tu pas quelquefois chante pour toi seul dans ta chambre ou dans les bois? C'est le meme sentiment involontaire qui me force composer; composons donc (to Virieu, Corr Dec. 1818 [18-73]). (4) Lamartine was aware when publishing the Meditations that he was cultivating new poetic style, one rooted in protracted meditation on the art of poetry making. Alain Vaillant has already made compelling case that the hard evidence of versification in Lamartine is more at stake than philosophy, psychology, or abstract discourses on music; but while Vaillant limits himself to Le Lac and the hermeneutics of its echoing structure, I propose fuller reading of the overall volume as the story of Lamartines own developing ars poetica. The first section of this paper will highlight how the poet, reconnecting with the experiential and expressive self, reinforced poetry through surprisingly non-sentimentalized confrontations with as well as through an explicit resistance to the genre of prose. Next, through chronological reading of select poems that enact his discourse on poetry in his correspondence, I will trace the poet's figurations of water in the Meditations to show how they reflect critical stages in an evolving poetic process. Lamartine's elusive shores will serve as metaphor for the way he continually reassesses, effaces, and resituates the limits of poetry. The Poetics of Prosaic Landscapes In surprising contrast to the pale and nebulous depictions of scenery that appear throughout the Meditations, Lamartine's comments to close correspondents indicate that he found inspiration in ordinary, unadorned but vividly illuminated natural surroundings: je ne me sens aucune curiosite pour tout ce qui n'est pas du soleil et de la belle et pure nature (to Virieu, Corr Aug. 1818 [18-44]). Informed by English poetry at young age, Lamartine, who sought to emulate what he described as Alexander Pope's fused role as poet, philosopher, and bon ami, also picked up on Mme de Stael's connection between what she considers the superiority of the English imagination to English poets' propensity for capturing sensory experience: ils ont l'art d'unir intimement les reflexions philosophiques aux sensations produites par les beautes de la Champagne (De la litterature II: 220). …